2i2 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



ness and pleasure and increased proficiency in the qualities 

 required by our state of life, but not necessarily of wealth or 

 social advancement, for the whip of poverty or ill-health may 

 be a better stimulant to further energy and enterprise in our 

 particular case than wealth and success would be; but they 

 and all acts performed for the good of others will carry their 

 reward of joy, pleasure and happiness in and throughout our 

 own lives and the future lives we are destined by their value 

 to lead in the bodies of our children throughout all future ages. 

 So as joy and happiness make heaven, it is in the power 

 of each of us to make a heaven or hell of this life, and to 

 condemn our children to future heavens or hells in which we 

 as well as they will have to for ever participate. The principal 

 difference between our bodily life at present and the future 

 lives we will live in our children's bodies and those of their 

 children who by the possession of like developments of mind 

 will make them fit abodes in the future for our particular 

 variety of soul and its efficiency and virtue, appears to me will 

 probably lie in the fact that whereas in this life we have to 

 bear the physical strain of existence and the mental grief of 

 our failures and shortcomings, should our lives be spent wisely 

 and usefully, such anxiety and remorse will be removed from 

 the future psychical existence of our souls, which I take it will 

 then impregnate and, to some extent, direct the acts of our 

 future offspring in just the same manner as the Spirit of the 

 Creator impregnates and controls the Universe He has created, 

 but relieved from the anxieties and griefs of our children's 

 material existence. Likewise to those who have failed to use 

 their short period of mortal existence to advantage this relief 

 will not be given unless or until their future offspring by 

 repeated mortal lives of suffering and penance remove the 

 purgatory imposed upon such souls for their selfishness, 

 follies and extravagances. For during our mortal life there is 

 no grief heavier to bear than the sorrow that accompanies our 

 knowledge of the shortcomings of those we love. 



If we lead useful lives, our souls will be granted true 

 knowledge of good and evil, which will constitute the judg- 

 ment that Christ predicted is to follow our departure from 

 this mortal globe, for it is possible to realise any state of exist- 

 ence that could intensify satisfaction over good done, or remorse 

 for evil committed, except the knowledge of how to do good to 



